> The SACD however probably sounded better due to the very same reason that these new Vinyl releases sounds better than the CD releases; better mastering.
Nope.
I mean, that's part of it, but no. Vinyl just doesn't have the resolution SACD has. Neither do CDs. Most SACDs came with dual layers - they'd play as CDs in a regular CD player, and as SACD in an SACD player, so you could compare. Yeah, the CD layer was usually really, really well-mastered, but the SACD layer? Mind-blowingly clear. I compare it to going from SD to HD, except with audio. This isn't just about mastering. There is literally more detail there.
You are neglecting to accept that technology does improve.
Yes, vinyl was good at the time. Yes, vinyl meant better quality masters for stuff. But vinyl can't actually reproduce the quality of the masters, and we had no technology at the time that could. Now we do, and we have for decades.
Take Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. I mentioned to someone that the SACD remaster of it was phenomenal and got a derisive "Ugh, it sounds better on vinyl" because "that's what the artist wanted". That album was produced -- by the artist -- specifically to take advantage of the newly-available CD format.
If you're going to argue that "some CDs are mastered badly" - yes, of course some are. So are some vinyls. That's not a limit of the medium, that's people doing stupid things.
When I said CRTs, I really should've said SD rather than HD. Yeah, CRTs have advantages. But as someone who had a widescreen 30" CRT at some point and had to move it on his own, I'm pretty happy to be rid of them!
1. Vinyl degrades with every usage. 2. Vinyl can't reproduce the same range as CDs. 3. It is virtually impossible to get all the dust off your vinyl record before playing. 4. Vinyl can hold much less audio than CDs. 5. Vinyl is much less portable than CD. 6. Vinyl is less flexible (from a technology point of view) than CD, and the CD form-factor.
And that's off the top of my head.
How would I know your reasons? I said it's an inferior technology, not that I have ESP.
Yes, I'm not saying that never happens. I'm saying it doesn't always happen, and if you're using this argument but still claiming vinyl doesn't get damaged over time, I think you're the one in the bubble.
I absolutely refuse to make an analogue copy of this. Plus I'd have to do all 6 channels.
What actually bugs me is I have an SACD player that can output a PCM stream over HDMI. So I should be able to plug that HDMI into something and capture the PCM stream. But I've not find a reasonably priced consumer device that can do that. Full HD video? Sure. But it'll downmix to stereo!
Go ahead and make a perfect copy of your LP. You can't. Built-in DRM.
I've never had a problem getting audio off a CD. Even with SACD it is still possible, though difficult (and should that medium have become popular, no doubt that would've been easy, too).
I'd say comparing this to "DVD player" vs "Movie" is a bit off - that's like saying "CD Player" vs "Live concert".
And like I said (in other comments?) any physical media I get is immediately ripped to a lossless format and saved on the media server (and backed up elsewhere). Then the physical media goes in a box.
Please let me know the quality of the audio from something you picked up for 50 cents. Tell me that it's not scratched all to hell and back, and see if I believe you.
Like I said, SACD died out. It's a superior technology, but it's gone. So it's an unfair comparison. However, you can probably pick up a CD at a garage sale/thrift store, too... and it will sound just as good as the day it was originally purchased.
It can. But, again, vinyls can break, crack, scratch, be left in the sun, etc. That doesn't mean they will, and neither does a CD "have" to go bad. Like I said, I have CDs from 20 years and 3 continents ago that still work.
Furthermore, I can make a 100% perfect copy of a CD I buy. So if I step on it, stomp it, microwave it and then run over it with my car, I still have a 100% perfect copy. Do that with vinyl.
You are kind of doing the same thing here - you're giving up the incredible advances in visual technology because of some of the secondary advantages... some of which you can still get with a modern TV.
I have a Big Flat TV(tm). Yeah, takes a couple of seconds to turn on. Big deal. It has no smart functionality - and yes, there's a media center PC plugged into it (sometimes that's a Raspberry PI, but those are a bit unresponsive).
As for the sound - no way will I let the TV handle the audio. Audio goes to the AV receiver and to real speakers. It did that even when the TV was a bigass CRT, because no TV has 5.1 surround.
Did I make some sacrifices? Maybe. But the whole point of a TV is to have pretty pictures. If you don't think hidef is worth some minor sacrifices (which, as stated, you can mostly work around) then i's pretty obviously not an important medium for you... and you are definitely in the minority.
And even you aren't claiming that the picture quality is better than hidef.
(BTW I use a plasma TV, so blacks are still blacks).
Virtually nobody uses horses as a means of transportation. And if you'd like to do some research about what New York City was like when horses were prevalent, you'll see why we moved away from that.
Everything else you're talking about is niche at best, too.
And I'm not talking about a mere "hobby". I'm talking about a fad that did, in fact, cause technology to regress. Audio quality was improving (steel-spool), improving (8-track), improving (vinyl), improving (CD), improving (DVD-A/SACD), degrading (128bit MP3), and the backlash to that made it degrade all the way back to vinyl.
Now high-quality audio is the niche. How does that make sense?
It's definitely a tactile experience, but I'm not sure I'd go as far as "respect". I grew up with vinyl, and I remember my dad teaching me how to take the record out of the sleeve without touching the part the tracks were on (my hands were too small to reach the spindle hole and the sides), how to carefully put it on the turntable, how to use the felt brush to clean as much dust as possible off, and yes, how to drop the needle. And I remember the sound of the needle hitting, and the scratches/pops of those first few seconds before it reached actual audio.
So I've been there, done that, and am happy to leave it in the past!
*laughs* yes, I was aware of those devices, but I think it's a pretty good guess that they're NOT what the above poster is using.
I got autosubscribed to an audiophile catalogue once (you buy ONE sacd...) The crazy stuff I saw in there. $25,000 for a turntable, and that does not include the $20,000 stylus! $50,000 cabinets that use friggin magnets to friggin levitate your record player so there are no vibrations.
And cables! $300/ft. Three. Hundred. Dollars. Per. Foot.
Oh and that's before the extra services. An extra $50/ft for pre-stressing it, simulating 1,000 hours of usage because that's how long it takes the electrons to align correctly. And $50/ft for pre-tensioning, simulating 1,000 hours of tension on the cable so lose electrons don't fall off!
I actually made one of those up, but I don't remember which one.
It's probably a bit of both. Cassette tapes could be made to have fairly high quality (Chrome/Metal tapes, for example) but the commercial ones you could buy were neither. And playing them over and over will degrade them. One of the advantages of CDs was that the read head never physically touches the medium.
I don't remember cassettes ever "killing off" vinyl, though. They existed side by side. What we'd do (until CDs showed up) was buy the vinyl and a good That's chrome tape, so we could share (:
I should note that someone in another comment pointed out that vinyl has built-in DRM. Go ahead, make a perfect copy of a vinyl record (:
The cover art was a good thing about vinyl, to be sure. And I actually have some vinyl sleeves hanging up in my office (with the vinyl record in them because I don't need it - and I only have those because they were included in a boxed set of remastered 5.1 remixes on blu-ray).
And, see, that's where the mainstream tech should have gone. We went hidef with video, and in fact the audio on blu-ray (or equivalent) movies is spectacular, even when it's old, old music that predates these formats (the music pretty much made Guardians of the Galaxy, for example). The master tapes for many classic albums are available and can produce that sound quality, and yet a precious few are released in that format...
I mean, obviously they make and sell them because people buy them, but the recording industry was happy to let that technology die. For all their ills (and there are many!), RIAA didn't create this fad. They aren't really even heavily pushing it, to be honest. They still make more money if they don't need to produce anything physical.
This really all started because some people "hated" the low-quality MP3/AAC/Whatever they were getting, back when iTunes was selling you 128K/b MP3s. Even though studies showed self-proclaimed audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between that and a CD, but that's besides the point. Rather than demanding higher bitrates or lossless audio (you know, better stuff), or just buying CDs which were, at the time, still in their prime, people went all the way back to vinyl.
And yes, a lot of that was probably the visual/tactile appeal, but... again, this is supposed to be about music.
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> The SACD however probably sounded better due to the very same reason that these new Vinyl releases sounds better than the CD releases; better mastering.
Nope.
I mean, that's part of it, but no. Vinyl just doesn't have the resolution SACD has. Neither do CDs. Most SACDs came with dual layers - they'd play as CDs in a regular CD player, and as SACD in an SACD player, so you could compare. Yeah, the CD layer was usually really, really well-mastered, but the SACD layer? Mind-blowingly clear. I compare it to going from SD to HD, except with audio. This isn't just about mastering. There is literally more detail there.
> But only minimally so,
And you only listen to your records minimally?
You are neglecting to accept that technology does improve.
Yes, vinyl was good at the time. Yes, vinyl meant better quality masters for stuff. But vinyl can't actually reproduce the quality of the masters, and we had no technology at the time that could. Now we do, and we have for decades.
Take Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. I mentioned to someone that the SACD remaster of it was phenomenal and got a derisive "Ugh, it sounds better on vinyl" because "that's what the artist wanted". That album was produced -- by the artist -- specifically to take advantage of the newly-available CD format.
If you're going to argue that "some CDs are mastered badly" - yes, of course some are. So are some vinyls. That's not a limit of the medium, that's people doing stupid things.
When I said CRTs, I really should've said SD rather than HD. Yeah, CRTs have advantages. But as someone who had a widescreen 30" CRT at some point and had to move it on his own, I'm pretty happy to be rid of them!
I solved this by turning the TV off while listening to music (:
1. Vinyl degrades with every usage.
2. Vinyl can't reproduce the same range as CDs.
3. It is virtually impossible to get all the dust off your vinyl record before playing.
4. Vinyl can hold much less audio than CDs.
5. Vinyl is much less portable than CD.
6. Vinyl is less flexible (from a technology point of view) than CD, and the CD form-factor.
And that's off the top of my head.
How would I know your reasons? I said it's an inferior technology, not that I have ESP.
What in Earth are you talking about? When did I ever say that was acceptable?
Are you saying we should stick with analogue because it's harder to spy on you? Because I have some bad news for you if that's the case.
Yes, I'm not saying that never happens. I'm saying it doesn't always happen, and if you're using this argument but still claiming vinyl doesn't get damaged over time, I think you're the one in the bubble.
> A better question is when was the last time you saw anyone traveling by horse drawn coach even for fun?
Actually, I know someone who rode her horse to the renaissance festival. Her and her friend, actually.
They got into a lot of trouble, too.
That hardly made an impact. Vinyl was still dying when the loudness wars happened.
I absolutely refuse to make an analogue copy of this. Plus I'd have to do all 6 channels.
What actually bugs me is I have an SACD player that can output a PCM stream over HDMI. So I should be able to plug that HDMI into something and capture the PCM stream. But I've not find a reasonably priced consumer device that can do that. Full HD video? Sure. But it'll downmix to stereo!
Go ahead and make a perfect copy of your LP. You can't. Built-in DRM.
I've never had a problem getting audio off a CD. Even with SACD it is still possible, though difficult (and should that medium have become popular, no doubt that would've been easy, too).
I'd say comparing this to "DVD player" vs "Movie" is a bit off - that's like saying "CD Player" vs "Live concert".
This is Blu-Ray vs VHS.
And like I said (in other comments?) any physical media I get is immediately ripped to a lossless format and saved on the media server (and backed up elsewhere). Then the physical media goes in a box.
Except for SACD where you can't do that.
These are the times I'm kind of mad at myself for not being a millionaire off peoples' gullibility.
Please let me know the quality of the audio from something you picked up for 50 cents. Tell me that it's not scratched all to hell and back, and see if I believe you.
Like I said, SACD died out. It's a superior technology, but it's gone. So it's an unfair comparison. However, you can probably pick up a CD at a garage sale/thrift store, too... and it will sound just as good as the day it was originally purchased.
It can. But, again, vinyls can break, crack, scratch, be left in the sun, etc. That doesn't mean they will, and neither does a CD "have" to go bad. Like I said, I have CDs from 20 years and 3 continents ago that still work.
Furthermore, I can make a 100% perfect copy of a CD I buy. So if I step on it, stomp it, microwave it and then run over it with my car, I still have a 100% perfect copy. Do that with vinyl.
You are kind of doing the same thing here - you're giving up the incredible advances in visual technology because of some of the secondary advantages... some of which you can still get with a modern TV.
I have a Big Flat TV(tm). Yeah, takes a couple of seconds to turn on. Big deal. It has no smart functionality - and yes, there's a media center PC plugged into it (sometimes that's a Raspberry PI, but those are a bit unresponsive).
As for the sound - no way will I let the TV handle the audio. Audio goes to the AV receiver and to real speakers. It did that even when the TV was a bigass CRT, because no TV has 5.1 surround.
Did I make some sacrifices? Maybe. But the whole point of a TV is to have pretty pictures. If you don't think hidef is worth some minor sacrifices (which, as stated, you can mostly work around) then i's pretty obviously not an important medium for you... and you are definitely in the minority.
And even you aren't claiming that the picture quality is better than hidef.
(BTW I use a plasma TV, so blacks are still blacks).
Vinyl was dying, with many new releases never even being released on that format. So yeah, it did kind of go away for a bit.
> But there have been a lot of really bad remasters to CD over the years
This is 100% correct. CDs can be made to sound bad, and the Loudness Wars lead to a lot of that...
Virtually nobody uses horses as a means of transportation. And if you'd like to do some research about what New York City was like when horses were prevalent, you'll see why we moved away from that.
Everything else you're talking about is niche at best, too.
And I'm not talking about a mere "hobby". I'm talking about a fad that did, in fact, cause technology to regress. Audio quality was improving (steel-spool), improving (8-track), improving (vinyl), improving (CD), improving (DVD-A/SACD), degrading (128bit MP3), and the backlash to that made it degrade all the way back to vinyl.
Now high-quality audio is the niche. How does that make sense?
It's definitely a tactile experience, but I'm not sure I'd go as far as "respect". I grew up with vinyl, and I remember my dad teaching me how to take the record out of the sleeve without touching the part the tracks were on (my hands were too small to reach the spindle hole and the sides), how to carefully put it on the turntable, how to use the felt brush to clean as much dust as possible off, and yes, how to drop the needle. And I remember the sound of the needle hitting, and the scratches/pops of those first few seconds before it reached actual audio.
So I've been there, done that, and am happy to leave it in the past!
*laughs* yes, I was aware of those devices, but I think it's a pretty good guess that they're NOT what the above poster is using.
I got autosubscribed to an audiophile catalogue once (you buy ONE sacd...) The crazy stuff I saw in there. $25,000 for a turntable, and that does not include the $20,000 stylus! $50,000 cabinets that use friggin magnets to friggin levitate your record player so there are no vibrations.
And cables! $300/ft. Three. Hundred. Dollars. Per. Foot.
Oh and that's before the extra services. An extra $50/ft for pre-stressing it, simulating 1,000 hours of usage because that's how long it takes the electrons to align correctly. And $50/ft for pre-tensioning, simulating 1,000 hours of tension on the cable so lose electrons don't fall off!
I actually made one of those up, but I don't remember which one.
It's probably a bit of both. Cassette tapes could be made to have fairly high quality (Chrome/Metal tapes, for example) but the commercial ones you could buy were neither. And playing them over and over will degrade them. One of the advantages of CDs was that the read head never physically touches the medium.
I don't remember cassettes ever "killing off" vinyl, though. They existed side by side. What we'd do (until CDs showed up) was buy the vinyl and a good That's chrome tape, so we could share (:
I should note that someone in another comment pointed out that vinyl has built-in DRM. Go ahead, make a perfect copy of a vinyl record (:
The cover art was a good thing about vinyl, to be sure. And I actually have some vinyl sleeves hanging up in my office (with the vinyl record in them because I don't need it - and I only have those because they were included in a boxed set of remastered 5.1 remixes on blu-ray).
And, see, that's where the mainstream tech should have gone. We went hidef with video, and in fact the audio on blu-ray (or equivalent) movies is spectacular, even when it's old, old music that predates these formats (the music pretty much made Guardians of the Galaxy, for example). The master tapes for many classic albums are available and can produce that sound quality, and yet a precious few are released in that format...
I mean, obviously they make and sell them because people buy them, but the recording industry was happy to let that technology die. For all their ills (and there are many!), RIAA didn't create this fad. They aren't really even heavily pushing it, to be honest. They still make more money if they don't need to produce anything physical.
This really all started because some people "hated" the low-quality MP3/AAC/Whatever they were getting, back when iTunes was selling you 128K/b MP3s. Even though studies showed self-proclaimed audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between that and a CD, but that's besides the point. Rather than demanding higher bitrates or lossless audio (you know, better stuff), or just buying CDs which were, at the time, still in their prime, people went all the way back to vinyl.
And yes, a lot of that was probably the visual/tactile appeal, but... again, this is supposed to be about music.